This worries the first guy and he tells him to be careful. ‘Pfff, no need to fret. They’ve installed rubber concrete down there. See, I could jump and I’d just bounce back up.”

The second guy, realising the stranger was delusional, was about to move away when the man threw himself over the edge. Shocked, the second guy ran to the railing and saw the man plummet to the ground, only to rebound up and land safely back on the observation deck.

“Incredible! I’ve never seen anything like it! Is it safe?” The astonished man enquires. “Completely.” The stranger replies, “I helped design it. You should try it, it’ll be quite the tale to tell your friends’!”

So the second man climbs the railing, takes a deep breath, leaps from the edge, falls a hundred stories and….splat. He becomes pavement pizza.

Just then Lois Lane steps out of the elevator onto the observation deck. She waves to her companion and apologises for being late. “I hope you weren’t too bored waiting?” She asks.

When I was a wee brat, my sister had quite a few dolls. Dolls everywhere, on shelves, in the corners, on the beds, in the closets in her bedroom.

Right, Pat?

And this was something of a golden era of dolls. They all had their gimmicks. Some were super tall, others had the ability to walk, there was even one you could give a hair cut by turning a knob in the back of her head.

To this day, I refer to “Turning the Knob on the Back of Your Head” as getting a hair cut.

Seeing that I have been giving myself haircuts since 2003, I know that knob well.

My British audience would most likely be having a quiet giggle about how I turn my own knob.

My American audience will have to understand that means just what rudeness it sounds like.

At any rate, the joke today… it is on the same vein. I present “A Woman Goes For A Facelift”.

A woman in her 40’s went to a plastic surgeon for a face-lift. The surgeon told her about a new procedure called “The Knob,” where a small knob is placed on the back of a woman’s head and can be turned to tighten up her skin to produce the effect of a brand new face lift.

Of course, the woman wanted “The Knob.” Over the course of the years, the woman tightened the knob and the effects were wonderful. The woman remained young looking and vibrant.

After fifteen years, the woman returned to the surgeon with two problems. “All of these years, everything has been working just fine. I’ve had to turn the knob many times and I’ve always loved the results. But now I’ve developed two annoying problems: “First, I have these terrible bags under my eyes and the knob won’t get rid of them.”

The doctor looked at her closely and said, “Those aren’t bags, those are your breasts.”

She sighed and said, “Well, I guess there’s no point in asking about the goatee….”

I have often said “Beauty happens everywhere, prepare yourself, and take a camera.”

Even when you are doing something that you might consider mundane, you might be surprised.

All it takes is to stop and smell the roses.

In my case, it was to stop and load the back of the car with the groceries.

You see we had just had a whole bunch of rainstorms. That’s a technical term “whole bunch”. We had a miss of a hurricane, then a couple days of storms. All that gets followed by what passes for normal, which really is just a setting on the washer.

Since we, as a species, have decided to ignore what is happening around us, the weather got “weird”.

South Florida at this time of year Back In The Old Days of the 80s and before, or so I have been told, had very regular weather in The Wet Season. Rain at 4:30PM. Clear for the drive home.

Then we managed to fill up the place with condos put too close to roads and homes that were once low slung and now are beginning to look strangely familiar to anyone who grew up in a colder climate. You know, two stories or more. Split Levels. Frame houses.

Yeah, all of that will get knocked down the first time we have a proper Category 3 blow through like Matthew was supposed to be here. Those houses will all end up in my swimming pool and like places.

If you are moving down here from Up North, buy an older house. One floor. Concrete Block. Impact Glass. Non-Flat roof made of Tile. That’s a start. Let the other guy “take the hit”.

We moved here after everyone filled the place up and took over from someone else who wandered off to the Florida Keys to build a house on stilts. I guess he wanted to fish for Lion Fish off his back porch.

But the storms don’t come at the same time since all those homes and all those pitched roofs and all that black asphalt warmed the air. The sun hits it all, warms it up and creates a strong updraft. It creates an island of heat that my own house is on the edge of.

So those 4:30 PM storms hit south of Miami and at the airport since the airport is a big open grassy field. We get our storms at random times, seemingly around “The Dinner Hour” which certainly varies, or over night, or all day.

You get the picture… it all changed.

This particular day was one of those random days. We got rain most of the afternoon and that meant that we were puttering. I went into the kitchen and got creative and realized I needed a few things from the market. Since it was raining, we went down to The Big Publix downtown in Fort Lauderdale since there is a parking garage built over top of the market. Convenient and you don’t have to park in another area code because you want to park in the shade.

Another Floridian trick: You will park way “out there” so you can put your car under a tree, then walk way back. This is so your car doesn’t melt in the sun. Of course you get your suntan on the walk back from the shop, or the mall, or what have you.

Tourists tan. Locals don’t.

The building is built like a bunker. Thick walls to support all those SUVs and Exotic Cars that people here seem to think they need to show off to their neighbors with. Plus my qualifies-for-antique-license-plates Jeep Wrangler.

Think of a casino. No idea of what is happening around you, outside, day or night. You can’t tell if you are in the middle of a war in one of those bunkers of a buildings.

I was in Aisle 7, I think. Giggling at the magazines. Looking at the pictures and considering translating one of the Spanish Language ones just for practice.

We heard the weather then. A Deep Rumble, and a far away wind. Considering we were further inside that building than my entire property length, that was a surprise.

“Must be rain”.

We rarely use umbrellas here. Locals, that is. You see someone using an umbrella and it is a snowbird or other tourist, or it is one of those rain storms that has no wind.

This wasn’t that. It was a gully washer out there.

We managed to finish the shopping and went up to load up the car. I stopped dead in my tracks and looked West. Weather almost always moves East to West here except the times it moves North to South or Up and Down.

Scratch that, you really can’t tell what way a specific cell is Supposed To Move. Thunderstorms can come from any direction at any time in October.

And there it was. Looking Caged. A thunderstorm. I guess that was what I heard when I was reading that one Spanish magazine.

They do come from any direction and sometimes they just pose for you.

Finishing the shopping, we made it home without incident. Just a little rain starting up just as we got into the driveway and loaded the food into the house.

He loved his job, driving a train had been his dream ever since he was a child.

He loved to make the train go as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, one day he was a little too reckless and caused a crash.

He made it out, but a single person died.

Well, needless to say, he went to court over this incident.

He was found guilty, and was sentenced to death by electrocution.

When the day of the execution came, he requested a single banana as his last meal.

After eating the banana, he was strapped into the electric chair.

The switch was flown, sparks flew and smoke filled the air- but nothing happened.

The man was perfectly fine.

Well, at the time, there was an old that said a failed execution was a sign of divine intervention, so the man was allowed to go free.

And somehow, he managed to get his old job back driving the train.

Having not learned his lesson at all, he went right back to driving the train with reckless abandon.

Once again, he caused a train to crash, this time killing two people.

The trial went much the same as the first, resulting in a sentence of execution.

For his final meal, the man requested two bananas.

After eating the bananas, he was strapped into the electric chair.

The switch was thrown, sparks flew, smoke filled the room- and the man was once again unharmed.

Well, this of course meant that he was free to go.

And once again, he somehow manages to get his old job back.

To what should have been the surprise of no one, he crashed yet another train and killed three people.

And so he once again found himself being sentenced to death.

On the day of his execution, he requested his final meal- three bananas.

“You know what? No,” said the executioner. “I’ve had it with you and your stupid bananas and walking out of here unharmed. I’m not giving you a thing to eat, we’re strapping you in and doing this now.”

Well, it was against protocol, but the man was strapped in to the electric chair without a last meal.

The switch was pulled, sparks flew, smoke filled the room- and the man was still unharmed.

The executioner was speechless.

The man looked at the executioner and said “Oh, the bananas had nothing to do with it. I’m just a bad conductor.”

3 Dads
R’s son was on the HS fencing team. Now at College.
Me: Is B on the fencing team in college?
R: No. He competed in only a couple of events his Sr. year in HS.
G: So he didn’t stick with it.
Me: If you don’t keep up you get rusty.
R: He lost his edge…
Me: I get the point

I want to buy a self driving car…
But every time I go to look at one it drives away!

What happens if you go into labor in the ocean?
You have to have a sea-section!

What do you do when a Piglet goes missing?
Send out a hamber alert!

I wasn’t sure when the sun was coming up…
But then it dawned on me.

Where do ghosts shop?
At the Bootique.

I wasn’t sure how to use my computer mouse
But then it clicked
I could have given you some pointers.
I’ve got it in hand now
You’ve let the cat out of the bag now
I’m just sitting here spinning my wheel still

I tried to tell the Egyptian that he was drowning
But he was in denial
you could say he’s up a certain river without a paddle…

Do Egyptians fall for pyramid schemes?

I tried to tell a Parisian that he was drowning
But he was insane

Dad what’s a debate
The bait is what you put at the end of a fishing line.

I found myself standing in the backyard. I wasn’t alone. I think, strictly speaking, I am never alone in the yard. There are always wild critters back there. Lizards, snakes, iguanas, and more.

No, I had my own critter with me. Rack. The McNab SuperDog(TM) was staring at me. I wasn’t the font of all knowledge, but he seems to think so.

I went back to puttering. After a glancing blow from Hurricane Matthew, I stood the lawn chair upright, and found that I had some weeds to pull. There are always weeds to pull in a temperate or tropical yard and garden. You can always find something that doesn’t belong.

Freeport Bahamas got slammed by that storm, we didn’t really have anything that a line of Thunderstorms would have caused.

I reached down to pull some philodendron vine that had decided it wanted to live in the turf that passes for grass here and bent back upright.

He was still staring.

I said “What?” as I walked toward the grey bin to drop the fist full of vines and other unwelcome guests.

Rack trotted away, bouncing at each step.

Me being the clumsy type, I bumped into the trash can.

At that point, Rack shot into hyperspace. I felt the breeze waft past as he ran past me at something over the speed of light, Einstein not withstanding, and heard the pop as he passed behind the shed. Rack had disappeared into the alternate universe and paid a visit to his other family in the dog universe.

Simultaneously I heard another pop behind me as he re-materialized and dropped back into normal space.

Hard to believe that this was the same fearful dog that I had adopted around three years ago. Having spent his first six months with some moron who thought hunting was the right thing to do with his free time, and that a herding dog would be the right thing to have with it, and the next month and a half in a veterinarian office getting more fearful by the day, I had a dog who has something that would best be described as having PTSD.

Not to mock anyone who has PTSD, but a fearful dog like Rack will drop to his belly if you drop a spoon into a cup of coffee, and I have seen him flatten out in the middle of a four lane highway when he heard a large semi-truck a quarter of a mile away blow out his brakes.

I have always had fearful dogs. By the time Lettie passed away, she was literally bulletproof. I could take her anywhere and she would simply deal with it. The first walk I took her to Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia well after dark, she slammed herself against a wall in fear, shivering, when the Route 23 bus came down The Hill from the Chestnut Hill Station.

Fearful dogs, I get. I know what they’re going through. They just take longer to come out of their shells.

Not everyone wants a goofy puppy who bounds around and acts like they are into everything that you are into. That’s a lot of work in a very short period of time, and most people are not up to task.

Goofy Puppies are great, you can mold them, and sometimes you even get it right. More often than not, you don’t get it right. Then you have a horrible yappy Havanese, Maltese, or Yorkshire Terrier who barks at anything and everything, fiercely, and tries to kill it. “It” could be a bird on a tree limb across the yard, or the 5:15PM flight into the local airport coming in from overseas. It could also be me or one of mine, out for my evening walk, and your dog went insane.
Why? Simple, you forgot to let it be a Dog. You tried to Humanize the creature and you ended up with a mental case. You forgot to guide your dog and teach it acceptable behavior in what to it is an alien environment.

I jumped looking at Rack’s smile. He went back into Hyperspace and re-materialized with me under the Mango Tree. I had the most Florida of experiences. I was rubbing my dog’s belly while he was wiggling around, under a mango tree, next to the coleus, adjacent to the pool, next to the sea grape tree.

I stood up, and bounced on the balls of my feet. Rack set himself upright, bounced into the air.

McNab Dogs can jump. He’s out of practice, but he can jump five feet off the ground and put his paws on my chest.

Oh well, I’ll have foot prints on my chest until I can change, no big deal.

He did a tight figure eight around the mango, then the palm, added a loop behind the bougainvillea, and came back with a leap and …

A Woof.

Ok, this is new. He actually barked. Once. Fearful PTSD Dogs don’t do that. They may whine or cry. They will hide, cower, shiver. But bark? In Joy?

Holy crap this is good!

You see, at a little past four years old, my terrified, scared PTSD McNab Dog learned that it can be alright to bark in joy!

I looked at him, upside down begging for more tummy rubs and said “Woooof?”.

He flipped back onto his feet, did another figure eight plus a half loop for good measure where he bounced off the back wall of the house, rebounded, and said “WOOF!”.
I thought that 7:45 in the morning may be a little early for WOOF! but we’ll see. It is past the 10PM to 7AM quiet time. Nobody was in Vern or Joe’s yards, I thought I’d hear about it later if there was a problem. Rack needed this!

I jumped into the air and played keep away weaving through the pots near the pool, next to the banana tree, stopped and bounced.

Rack ran back around and lept into the air, coming down and “WOOF!”.

“Woof?”

“WOOF!” Rack replied.

I responded with some more windsprints back and forth and running with Rack. I remember that I used to run 10Km around Valley Forge National Park in Pennsylvania and there was this one 45 degree hill there that I would power up on my runs…

One more lap around the mango tree and Rack ran over to the spa. When I saw him drink from the water there, I knew it was time to wind him down. He was still excited but it was time to go in. He needed the cleaner water from the bowl in there.

But that’s the key. Knowing what to do. No matter the breed, no matter the size, from Rudy the Chihuahua down the block to that Great Dane that is more horse than dog, you can have a balanced dog of a lifetime.

I’m believing that it is more about taking things at the dogs pace and being a guide instead of a leader. Making sure that what you do with the dog is not too much but just right. You need to uplift your fearful dog rather than calm down an aggressive dog.

After all, if the dog gets to be a hair trigger barky dog, it’s up to you to teach it to calm down.
It may be a bit too much to expect these days. The “Rational Man” that society used to depend on to get things done has been taken advantage and worn down and replaced by the “Entitled Man”. The Me First of the 1980s mindset ended up with day care for kids and for dogs and society is where it is today as a result.

But if you take things steadily and rationally, you may actually find that the returns are still there.

You may actually get a WOOF! of joy instead of a mental case pacing from front door to back barking at the jets in a holding pattern getting ready to land at the big city airport down the road a piece.

Which whiskey should you buy if you want to dance all night?
Wild Twerky!

What’s the difference between a cat and a complex sentence?
A cat has claws at the end of its paws. A complex sentence has a pause at the end of its clause.

Why did Beethoven get rid of his chickens?
All they said was, “Bach, Bach, Bach”

What did music tell the pancakes?
B flat.

What did the pancakes say back?
Pour Some Sugar on Me

I find hanging around in coffee shops
A great way to espresso yourself
As long as you don’t make a mocha-ry of yourself.
Its a little latte for that, It’s bean a while though.
At least you have your health, I’ve been coffee-ing all damn week.
I hope you feel a lait better soon.
Thank you, I can’t wait to get this frap put of my lungs.

When is the worst possible time to have a heart attack?
When you are playing Charades.

What do you call an alien in a swamp?
A MARSHian

What did one nose say when the other nose said “I love you”?
“Back achoo!”

A woman files for divorce from her husband, citing that he makes too many Star Wars puns.
When asked if this is true the husband says, “Divorce is strong with this one.”

A man walks into a bar with a newt on his shoulder.
The bartender says “What an interesting pet, whats his name?”
“Tiny” the man replies.
“What an odd name, why do you call him Tiny?”
“Because…He’s my newt.”

What do you call an Italian romance novel model who’s let himself go?
Flabio.

How did the desk lamp store manager feel when thieves stole all his lightbulbs?
He was delighted.

A vampire stopped coming to my nightly poker games.
All I said was that he made too many mistakes…

Why do the French like eating snails?
Because they can’t stand fast food!

A child asked his father, “How were people born?”
So his father said, “Adam and Eve made babies, then their babies became adults and made babies, and so on.”
The child then went to his mother, asked her the same question and she told him, “We were monkeys then we evolved to become like we are now.”
The child ran back to his father and said, “You lied to me!”
His father replied, “No, your mom was talking about her side of the family.”

A big thanks to all the sidewalks out there..
They’ve been keeping me off the streets for as long as I can remember!